


guilt and forgiveness and tea and coffee

by fauxtales



Series: Becoming Human Again [9]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Cleaning, Depression, Eating Disorders, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Forgiveness, Guilt, M/M, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Recovery, Self-Hatred, Survivor Guilt, implied PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fauxtales/pseuds/fauxtales
Summary: "You did bad things and you feel like you can never feel better again, you don’t deserve to feel better again. Right?”After everything that has happened, sometimes it's difficult for Lea to accept that he's allowed to feel okay again.
Relationships: Isa/Lea (Kingdom Hearts)
Series: Becoming Human Again [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1890835
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	guilt and forgiveness and tea and coffee

The kettle sits on the stove. The sink is empty of dishes for once. The smooth grey of the counters is clean and spotless. The midafternoon sun paints the kitchen in a warm glow. It is the picture of domesticity, a portrait of the normal home that everyone seems to want. Lea sits at the table and feels completely out of place.

This isn’t where he is meant to be. Years of training and fighting and sneaking between worlds as an assassin have taught him that. A normal life is not the one he got to have. Not the one he deserves now. Killers don’t get to settle down and live out the rest of their days as if nothing happened. They don’t get to have clean kitchens and warm sunlight. They live in the darkness, surrounded by their own shadow and in a perpetual state of despair. Or, failing that, they go on forever in that place in between, that endless grey that slowly drives them insane. That saps the ability to do or be anything else. At least, that’s always how Lea saw it. That’s what he had been taught. That’s what he had witnessed.

It’s not what happened though. He got out, somehow. He escaped that grey expanse and avoided the shadows and ended up here, sitting in a kitchen in the warmth of the sun - of the light. He worked hard for it, sure. He sought out the people he had to atone to, tried his best to make amends. Kairi forgave him his actions, became his friend. Riku still hasn’t, remains wary of him, but that’s only to be expected. He got Roxas and Xion back, the friends he lost. Isa is by his side again, and although he still has his struggles with the rest of them, things are going okay. They are together, best friends and partners, reunited and rebuilding their relationship at last. Even Ienzo and the rest of the apprentices that have returned after the fight have welcomed him back, despite his hand in getting them all killed in the first place. If Even jumps every time he rounds a corner or enters a room to see red hair, well… that’s a fairly reasonable reaction, all things considered.

The back door opens and closes. Lea drags his eyes away from the dust swirling in the shafts of sunlight to see who has come in. Isa carries a small plant in one hand, dirt under his fingernails despite his attempts to clean them off with the hose. He’s been outside in the garden for hours, pulling weeds and repotting the few indoor plants that have grown too big for their old homes. Something warm grows in Lea’s chest at the thought of it, the simplicity of it. Isa is finally getting better. The garden has been a good project for him, pulling him out of his head and into the reality of the world. Out of the grey.

And yet Lea can’t seem to do the same. Sure, he’s improved too, in his small ways. Incremental ways. Isa has his garden, Lea has the kitchen. Cooking and baking is something that he has found he excels at, and as an added bonus it tends to be soothing. Xion mentioned the idea of opening up a bakery and flower shop one day, saying that it could combine both Lea’s and Isa’s new hobbies into one. Isa insisted that it would be too much stress for him, at least for now; gardening is a relaxing thing for him only when he can do it at his own pace, with no one to interfere, no one to please but himself. After years of having to do the bidding of Xemnas, at his beck and call at all hours of the day, that makes sense. 

Lea considers the bakery idea a couple times a week, but has yet to commit. Unlike Isa’s gardening, Lea enjoys baking for others, enjoys taking requests. He struggles to eat much himself, to even find the desire to eat most days, but cooking a meal for someone else is different. It’s creating something for someone, doing something other than destroying in a way that will help another person. Roxas and Xion are always so excited when Lea cooks dinner, and it turns out that Roxas’s sweet tooth goes beyond just ice cream; he’ll devour an entire tray of cookies in a matter of minutes if not supervised. When Kairi or Naminé visit they always want to help somehow, although Naminé often ends up distracted by wanting to draw Lea in the kitchen instead. They have multiple drawings of that exact scene up on the fridge now. If Lea opened up a bakery, would he be able to inspire others the same way? Would his cooking bring happiness to the residents of Twilight Town?

Would it atone for all the bad he’s done?

“I know that face.” Isa’s deep voice cuts through Lea’s thoughts. He blinks, realization hitting him that he’s been staring at the red pastel of his hair in one of Naminé’s drawings for a while now. He swings his gaze around to find Isa leaning against the counter, drying his hands off with a towel. Lea hadn’t even realized Isa was washing his hands.

“What face?” Lea asks innocently. The slight shake in his voice and his inability to look Isa in the eye gives him away, but they both know this dance well enough by now.

“The ‘I’m a horrible person and don’t deserve anything’ face.” Isa’s tone is matter-of-fact, as it always is, but there is a note of sympathy there that softens it. Of all people, Isa understands carrying around guilt from his past actions. “The one that tells me you’re leading yourself down a spiral of bad thoughts and making yourself miserable. That face.”

“Oh.” Lea draws invisible circles on the kitchen table with his fingernail, watching the movement rather than looking at Isa. “That face. Right.”

Silence descends between them, as it often does. It’s one of the things they couldn’t seem to escape, even after working so hard to regain themselves and their relationship. A permanent scar that will never heal. Instead it has merely changed, taken on a new form. One that isn’t quite so unbearable, but a silence nonetheless. This silence is tense, thick with unspoken words on Isa’s part and the desire to run away from the conversation on Lea’s. It is better than the silences that cut, but Lea still wishes one of them could find a way to end it.

Isa sighs. He sets the towel on the counter, folded nicely and lined up next to the sink. It needs to be cleaned, but Isa can’t ever seem to leave dirty laundry looking like dirty laundry. His footsteps seem to echo too loud as Isa moves through the kitchen, filling the kettle and setting it on the stovetop to heat. He pulls down two mugs from the cupboard, along with a single serve pour over coffee dripper. Lea watches without moving as Isa pulls out the filters and grounds and gets everything set up, pulling out a tea bag for the other mug last. As he measures the coffee, Isa finally speaks.

“You deep cleaned the kitchen, I see.” Isa’s hands are steady as he scoops coffee into the filter. Lea wishes his would stop shaking. “It definitely needed it, so I can’t blame you there, but you typically only do that when you’re anxious.” Isa glances over his shoulder at Lea. It feels like he’s searching for something - answers, probably - but Lea doesn’t know how to give them. “Is that all you’ve done today?”

It’s a loaded question, to be sure. Their kitchen is big enough that it’s not unreasonable that Lea would take an entire morning just to clean it. At the same time, Isa is looking for more than that. If Lea stopped. If he took a break at all. If he’s eaten yet today. Unfortunately, the answer to all of those questions is no and Lea doesn’t want to admit to having another bad day. He had been doing so well.

When the silence stretches on long enough, Isa relents, gives up on Lea actually giving him answers. “I see.” The water is not hot enough yet, but with everything prepared, Isa has nothing else to do with his hands. He leans against the counter again, staring Lea down with his arms crossed over his chest. “I really shouldn’t be giving you coffee, then. It’s an appetite suppressant and I know you use it to ignore your own needs.”

“I just forgot,” Lea says, voice small. He stares at his fingers again, scratching idly at the table top. He isn’t lying this time; he really was so focused on cleaning the kitchen to escape his thoughts that he forgot to eat food. Now he doesn’t feel hungry, too steeped in his own despair. “I’ll eat dinner, I promise.”

“You should eat something before then,” Isa points out. His voice is firm, but grows gentler as he continues. “Do you know what set you off?”

Another hard question. Lea really doesn’t know how to answer that one. It wasn’t something specific really, nothing that he can pinpoint as the moment when his thoughts started racing and the world seemed to shrink down to encompass only his self hatred and despair. It snuck up on him. A slow creep of thoughts at first, nagging and poking at him for days. Maybe weeks. There’s always that low level background noise of it these days, that insistent part of his brain reminding him of all the bad he’s done in the world, all the misery he’s caused. Then this morning he woke to yet another day of normalcy, of living this oddly domestic life he has managed to make for himself with the three people he cares for the most and it crashed over him like a wave. 

He made breakfast, he can remember that much. Xion and Roxas and Isa all sat down to eat it, praised Lea’s cooking as they always do, and Lea couldn’t stand to see them. Sitting there, talking. Smiling. Happy. As if the person who made their food hadn’t hurt them all in irreparable ways. Lea didn’t sit down, didn’t eat, just set about cleaning up the mess from making breakfast, doing the dishes as his family - the family he doesn’t deserve, can never deserve - finished their meal and went about their day. Roxas sped out the front door with his skateboard, eager to go meet his friends. Xion offered to help with the dishes, then went to her room when Lea said it was fine, he’s got it. Isa kissed him on the cheek and thanked him for the meal before disappearing into his garden. And through it all, Lea did his best to settle the churning in his stomach, the horrible feeling that he’s fooled all of these people into caring for him somehow when he doesn’t deserve it. Xion came out at some point, left the house to get lunch with Naminé. Isa floated through the kitchen to get something small to eat, grabbed a plant that needed repotting, too wrapped up in his plans for the garden to notice that Lea was still cleaning. That Lea hadn’t stopped cleaning.

Thoughts swirl in Lea’s mind. He thinks he might be sick. Isa is waiting for an answer and all Lea can think of is how this isn’t right. None of this is right. “I don’t deserve any of this.”

“What don’t you deserve?” The concern in Isa’s voice is like a punch to the chest. Lea hadn’t meant to say that out loud, hadn’t been ready to speak. Or maybe he was, and his mouth recognized it before his brain did. Either way, Isa is stepping in closer now, reaching a hand out to run through Lea’s hair as he watches him with concern. “What don’t you deserve, Lea?”

“You. This,” Lea blurts, gesturing with one hand to the space around them. The kitchen, the house, the world. “All of it is just so… so normal. Nice. It’s more than I ever dared hope to imagine for us and I… I don’t deserve any of it.”

“Well that’s just nonsense,” Isa says, shaking his head. “Of course you deserve-”

“No, I don’t!” Lea snaps. He shoves Isa’s hand away and stands, taking a few steps back to put the chair between them. A barrier that could never stop either of them but makes Lea feel better regardless. He grips the top of it with both hands, knuckles white as he tries to steady himself. “I am a killer. Coldblooded and heartless-” Lea has to laugh bitterly at the term, “-and too selfish to ever deserve this. I did such horrible things- I killed everyone around me, and even if I wasn’t always the one to hold the blade, I still set it up. I’m a monster, I… How could I ever think that I should be allowed to live a normal life after all that? It’s wrong. This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be here, I-”

“Enough.” Isa’s voice is firm and sharp. It startles Lea out of his spiral of misery, leaves him breathless as he stares up at his partner in surprise. Isa doesn’t look angry, the fists balled at his sides more an indication of tension than anything else. Lea bites his bottom lip and waits. “You’re just working yourself up now, and we know that’s not productive. We’ve talked about this, remember?”

“I know, but-”

“No buts.” Isa holds his hand out between them, stopping Lea before he can get going again. Then he takes a deep breath and lets it out slow. “I know this train of thought. I’ve been there too, loads of times. You’ve even walked me through this exact thought process before, remember? So I get it. You did bad things and you feel like you can never feel better again, you don’t deserve to feel better again. Right?”

Isa pauses, staring Lea down. Lea nods, not daring to talk as Isa clearly isn’t done. Isa sighs.

“Right.” Isa runs a hand through his hair, then continues. “So let's listen to your thoughts for a moment. You did bad things, so that means you don’t deserve anything good in your life. That’s what they are saying. What about me then?” Isa stares at Lea challengingly. “I gave the orders. I told you to do those things, and I did things just as bad. I tried to kill you.”

“But you risked your life to make things better!” Lea counters, his thoughts racing to find ways to dispute Isa’s arguments. “You’ve done everything in your power to make up for-”

“And you haven’t?” Isa cuts Lea off again. His voice is gentler now. He steps closer again, reaching out to lay one hand over Lea’s knuckles white on the chair. “Lea, you have done so much to make up for your wrongs. More than anyone else, I’d say. I know it’s hard to work through, but I promise you, the only person who hasn’t forgiven you is yourself.”

Lea lets out a shuddering breath. There’s something squeezing his chest, and as he tries to take a breath to speak he finds a lump in his throat blocking the way. His vision blurs and his eyes feel wet and when a sob finally breaks through it feels like some sort of relief. The tension held in his hands and in his shoulders begins to let go. Isa squeezes Lea’s hand and wipes tears from his cheek and smiles so very soft and Lea lets himself have this moment. 

After a minute or so, Lea calms down and manages to catch his breath. Isa helps him back into his chair - after pulling him into a tight hug - and by then the kettle has begun to whistle at them. Silence falls between them again, but it is an easier silence, more of a gentle quiet as the sound of Isa finishing the coffee and pouring water over his tea fills it with the cozy sounds of a normal life. Isa hands Lea his mug and pulls a chair closer to him before settling down. They sit together like that for a moment, letting the warmth of tea and coffee bring them back to a safer place.

“And Riku,” Lea finally says. Isa looks at him in confusion. Lea smiles sadly. “You said the only person who hasn’t forgiven me is myself, but that’s not quite true. Riku still hasn’t forgiven me either.”

“Ah… yes.” Isa sighs softly, shifting the mug in his hand. “Riku… struggles with it all. I doubt he’s really forgiven any of us yet, for the things we did to Sora and Kairi. But I think he’ll probably come around, even if he never fully forgives you. He can be in the same room now without glaring, so I would say that’s progress.”

Lea takes a sip of his coffee before responding. “I don’t think I want him to forgive me.” It’s hard to admit, but Lea manages it anyway. “I think that I need someone to still hold me accountable for the things I’ve done. And I’m sure that’s not the healthiest way to think about it, but… that’s where I’m at right now. Maybe someday I’ll manage to forgive myself and not need that anymore, but for now… that is right.”

Isa doesn’t respond right away. He studies Lea, once again trying to find answers Lea doesn’t think he has. Then Isa takes a breath and nods. “It’s a step, at least. We’re all guilty of various things, some of us more than others, but we’re trying to move forward. Beating yourself up over it won’t help, and neither will insisting that you don’t deserve the life you have now. Maybe you don’t...” Isa shrugs, seeming to flounder for words for a moment. Then he reaches out to grasp Lea’s hand. Isa smiles softly. “But neither do I. And I want to give you that life anyway. So please… accept it. For me, if not for yourself.”

Lea stares at their hands. Isa’s is bigger than his, wider and stronger than Lea’s skinny fingers. Hands made to hold on to all the important things, designed to grasp whatever they can reach. Lea has always felt that his hands were too frail to hold on to anything like that, but as he shifts his fingers to intertwine them with Isa’s, he thinks that maybe together they could hold on just fine.

“Alright,” Lea says softly. He gives Isa a small smile, still shaky but genuine nonetheless. “You too, though. For me. If we’re going to give each other a life we don’t deserve, we have to do it together.”

Isa’s smile grows. He leans in to press a kiss to Lea’s lips and Lea thinks that this is exactly where he wants to be, deserving or not.

“Always.”


End file.
